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Nathalia Henrich

Manoel de Oliveira Lima (b. Recife, December 25, 1867–d. Washington DC, March 24, 1928) was one of the most prestigious men of letters of his generation. As a historian, diplomat, literary ...
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Manoel de Oliveira Lima (b. Recife, December 25, 1867–d. Washington DC, March 24, 1928) was one of the most prestigious men of letters of his generation. As a historian, diplomat, literary critic, journalist, writer, and professor, he maintained an intense intellectual activity. His strong and often controversial views galvanized public opinion and gathered as many admirers as detractors. The “Fat Don Quixote” and the “Intellectual Ambassador of Brazil” were at the same time deemed a “Diplomatic Torpedo” with an “incontinent pen.” Lima became a renowned scholar and public speaker thanks to his expertise on Latin American history, especially on the history of Brazil. He was the author of numerous books and articles published in Europe and the Americas, and a lecturer at Harvard, Stanford, and the Sorbonne. He was a founding member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. His career as a diplomat began in 1891, the same year he married Flora de Oliveira Lima (neé Cavalcanti de Albuquerque, b. Cachoeirinha, October 26, 1863, d. August 12, 1940, Washington, DC), his lifelong companion and collaborator. Together they lived in Portugal, Germany, the United States, Great Britain, Japan, Venezuela, and Belgium until his retirement. A devoted bibliophile, Oliveira Lima donated his rich collection of rare books, artwork, manuscripts, prints, photographs, and documents from his personal archive to the Catholic University of America in 1916. In 1920, he established residence in Washington, DC to oversee the organization of the university’s library, which was inaugurated in 1924. He taught international law and acted as librarian at CUA until his death in 1928. The Oliveira Lima Library (OLL) is currently considered one of the finest collections of Luso-Brazilian materials and one of the most important Brasilianas in the world.

Matias Spektor

The John F. Kennedy administration took a bet on the incoming president of Brazil, João Goulart, as he took office on September 8, 1961. Goulart was not a radical socialist, but his ...
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The John F. Kennedy administration took a bet on the incoming president of Brazil, João Goulart, as he took office on September 8, 1961. Goulart was not a radical socialist, but his opponents portrayed him as an unpredictable nationalist who might unadvisedly fuel the flames of social upheaval and radical revolution, turning Brazil into a second Cuba. Yet, the White House estimated that Goulart was someone they could do business with and sympathized with the idea of Reformas de Base (Goulart’s program of “basic reforms”), which included the extension of labor protections to rural workers, redistributive agrarian reform, and universal suffrage. United States support for Goulart materialized in the form of economic aid, financial assistance via the IMF, and development assistance via the Alliance for Progress partnership. Within a year, however, the tide turned as Goulart failed to comply with American demands that he ban leftists from his cabinet. In a matter of months in 1962, the White House abandoned any hopes of engagement with the Brazilian president. While the crisis that led to Goulart’s fall in March 1964 was the making of domestic political actors within Brazil—as was the military coup to unseat the president—the likelihood and success rate of the golpe grew as the United States rolled out successive rounds of targeted actions against Goulart, including diplomatic and financial pressure, threats of abandonment, support for opposition politicians, collusion with coup plotters, signaling future military support for the plotters in the eventuality of civil war, and the granting of immediate diplomatic recognition for the incoming authoritarian military leaders after the coup. After Goulart, Brazil remained under authoritarian rule for two consecutive decades.

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